


I am an Ocean, I am the Sea

by tonightless



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, M/M, Modern Era, POV Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28406970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonightless/pseuds/tonightless
Summary: When he headed into the kitchen, they were waiting for him.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 67





	I am an Ocean, I am the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old, old WIP I've resurrected.
> 
> Please heed the tags / warnings.

╔════════════════════╗

_  
I am an ocean  
I am the sea  
there is a world inside of me  
  
Lost in the abyss   
drowned in the deep  
no set of rules could salvage me._

_—Bring Me The Horizon  
  
_

**╚════════════════════╝**

On Monday night, Arthur was in position when his father came home. The briefcase dropped into his waiting hand while Uther shrugged out of his dark, heavy coat in the half-light of the hallway.

Uther studied him for a moment.

“You’ve lost weight, Arthur.”

“I was sick last week.”

Arthur held out the briefcase and Uther eventually took it and turned away, his grey-suited back Arthur’s cue to slip out of the house and head to the tennis court.

The bitterness in his gut eased with every serve he practiced. Eventually, Arthur was a machine: throw, serve. Throw, serve.

His stomach growled. Arthur grit his teeth.

Throw, serve.

 _Thwack_. The ball shot across the court with all of Arthur’s strength behind it. He watched it bounce once, twice, thrice – panting hard, suddenly too-human under the stark white lights, his heart thumping against his ribs and sweat cooling on his skin. Thoughts circled in his head like vultures, waiting to dive, but he only disappeared into the house when his mind was blank and he could breathe again.

──────

On Tuesday, Arthur met with the headmaster.

The dossier – it felt more official to call it that – was locked in his hands. He flicked though it every few minutes, more to stop himself from leaving than to fuss over its contents. The lightbulb flickered over his head and he wondered idly if that was an omen.

Eventually the door opened.

Mr. Aridean’s office was a hideous, gloomy cage of a room. The air smelt old and damp and the grimy cabinets were so overstuffed with school memorabilia it felt like the present simply didn’t exist – let alone the future. The blinds were half-shut; what sun stole past them landed in sharp blades on the carpet.

Mr. Aridean eyed Arthur like a hawk, barely scrutinised the evidence that Arthur had gathered, and within minutes had settled into his high-backed chair with a self-satisfactory air.

They regarded each other for a long, unbroken moment.

“Well,” Mr. Aridean said. “Are you gay?”

Arthur didn’t look away. “Yes.”

Mr. Aridean made a noncommittal noise and, with a cruelly delicate flick of his hand, closed the dossier.

“And what am I meant to do with this?”

“You’re the headmaster, not me,” Arthur replied, marvelling at how coolly he spoke when every word from this vulture’s mouth was a stinging blow to his pride. “There have been other incidents on the school grounds.”

Mr. Aridean narrowed his eyes.

“Not,” he said crisply, “to my knowledge.”

Smoothly, Arthur got to his feet and tried to ignore the fury swirling in the pit of his stomach.

He left the dossier on the desk. To take it back would be too close to defeat.

──────

Wednesdays, they were film nights with Merlin. They used Arthur’s staff discount to demolish a large tub of popcorn and work their way through films that inevitably only Merlin wanted to watch, the kind that needed subtitles and a Wikipedia article to make any sense. The popcorn had been Merlin’s way of bribing Arthur to sit through the torturous hours of black-and-white drudgery, but Arthur had trained himself not to want it anymore. He’d seen the amount of butter and sugar and salt that was churned through it. He had water on Wednesday nights, instead. Cool, clear, safe water.

That was until a few weeks later, when Merlin smuggled some into the cinema. In the dark Arthur felt rather than saw the box that Merlin had all but jabbed into his ribs and only understood when his glare landed on Merlin and Merlin said:

“Homemade, just for you.” In the glow of the screen Arthur could just make out his earnest expression. “And free to boot.”

That box short-circuited his system – one he’d carefully built and preserved even more carefully, and Arthur hoped that Merlin didn’t hear the unsteadiness in his voice when he replied:

“I’m amazed you can operate a microwave, _Mer_ lin.”

“Are you watching your weight for the team?” Merlin asked, placing the box in Arthur’s lap. “Because of training?”

In reply, Arthur gestured at the advert playing. But Merlin only looked away when Arthur clasped the box gingerly, and he kept glancing at Arthur out of the corner of his eye.

Guilt won out eventually. Arthur ate. He let sidelong glances force his hand and now popcorn was caught in his throat and sat in his stomach and he gripped the box so hard his hands ached. He tried to focus on his breathing – even on the bloody film – but in his head an exquisite war was raging. When the credits rolled, he felt stupid and hollowed out.

The next week he dropped the box. The popcorn scattered all over the floor and even the hurt in Merlin's eyes couldn't kill the relief that blossomed in his chest.

──────

On Thursdays, his father had started sitting down with him for breakfast, so Arthur just got up earlier for his runs. And earlier, and earlier, and earlier. Running made him feel strong, even when spots danced before his eyes and he had to prop himself up on the doorframe at the end. He was exhausted, worn out to the bone ( _with no end in sight_ ) but – but he was disciplined, too. Dedicated. Unstoppable. And that had to be enough.

Sometimes it felt like the house would swallow him up. Its empty, gaping rooms, with Arthur rattling around inside. Mithian came once a week to clean, but apart from that, it was just him.

He sat in Morgana’s room sometimes to think. He wanted to call her. But he didn’t want to hear about her shining new life in Spain or tell her what his has become.

Instead he shrunk further, watched by the house.

──────

Friday nights, he worked.

He shovelled popcorn into huge tubs, flogged nachos and dips, poured fizzy drinks. He was _good_ at this, now: food was everywhere, and he never gave in. He knew why his body was shutting down, slowly, inch by inch, but he was a conscript who had learned the ropes and asked no questions and in turn, he was kept afloat. Even in the heat and stink of the cinema’s food counter he was kept sane.

He floated behind the till until he almost fell, but a steady hand caught his elbow.

“You should go home, Arthur.”

And Arthur just nodded. He took off his cap and apron and walked home. It was cold, fuck it was cold, but when he peered around most people were in light jackets.

The lights were on when he got back to the house. His father was back, then. He almost didn’t go in, struck suddenly by Uther’s routine, assessing glances at him – if he actually got up early enough to see Arthur slip out for his run – and why was it that everyone was _looking_ at him, all sad and serious and _scrutinising_? – but it was cold cold cold so he floated up the drive and into the crushing warmth of the house.

Arthur peeled off his coat and scarf and stood there for a moment.

Coffee, he decided. He had to do his homework.

When he headed into the kitchen, they were waiting for him. His father, pasty and ancient-looking. Morgana, by the sink and looking out onto the back garden, _there_ in a way that Arthur had longed for. And then there was Merlin, nursing a cup of tea in one hand, lips pressed into a thin line.

He hadn’t seen Morgana since she had left and the shock on her face startled him. His eyes darted from her to his father to Merlin and back again, and he was suddenly unbearably hot under the weight of their gazes.

He took a step back.

“Arthur.” Dread pooled in his stomach when his father spoke, but he froze on instinct. A muscle worked in Uther’s jaw; his eyes roved Arthur up and down, assessing, pained. The routine glance. “You’re not well.”

Morgana opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. And for all she stared, she didn’t move towards him. No one ventured in no man’s land, and for that, Arthur was eternally glad; he couldn’t fathom them touching him. He’d sooner die first.

“Right.” Arthur said eventually, and he liked the dullness of it. “But I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Merlin said, so softly Arthur barely heard him.

“Who are you to tell me what I’m feeling?”

“You haven’t been eating.”

“Don’t be an _idiot_. Of course I have.”

“Lance texted," Merlin went on. "He sent you home because you looked like you were—”

“It gets hot behind the counter. I could’ve stayed.”

Morgana stopped Merlin with a look.

“Arthur…” She began, picking her words with uncharacteristic care. “What we’re trying to say is that – that we don’t think you see what we see. You're - you're skin and bones. Your clothes are hanging off you.”

Arthur stared at her, bewildered. He was used to her being cutting and self-righteous and achieving, off doing what she wanted because she had the luxury of not caring what Uther thought. But now she was just _stupid_. She had no idea how it felt to have his clothes hanging on him as though he were a scarecrow ( _a straw man who would go up in flames should anyone light a match_ ). It didn’t matter that he was never small enough, never disappeared enough, never good enough because he was running ( _limping falling_ ) a race with the finish line always out of reach. _It didn’t matter_.

And just like that, he was centred and calm.

“My clothes fit just fine.”

“ _Look_ at yourself, Arthur.” That was Uther, eyes flinty and shining. He jabbed his finger at the window, and Arthur willed himself to be defiant in the face of them all, just as he had before Mr. Aridean. But he bit his lip. And then he obeyed. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes were sunken, and he knew that under his jumper his collarbones jutted from his shoulders. He barely kept himself from sliding his hand under the collar so he could dip his fingertips into the hollows between bone and throat. And then, still held by their gazes, too tired to resist, he rediscovered the hollows there. A tiny, ancient ritual. It should have soothed him. Instead, something in him stirred.

They didn’t know the price he had paid for these dips and ridges and small peaks of bone, or that it was easiest ( _best_ ) to let it take him than fight against its desires – no, its _demands_ , and abruptly the usual tangle of disgust, fear, and pride rippled through his head. His body was a battlefield. That was all.

Arthur let his hand drop back to his side and turned away. He put the kettle on, rummaged for the coffee, found his favourite mug. He breathed, and was dimly aware that his hands were shaking.

“You didn’t have to bother coming all the way back,” he told Morgana without looking up.

“You told me you were fine.” She was indignant, finally familiar, and unthinkingly, he smiled.

“I am.”

He tipped the grounds into his mug and poured the water and stirred. The clink of spoon was too loud in the new, deadened silence, but he was too calm to be afraid, even with the wall of condemnation at the opposite end of the room. Even with them watching him set the spoon down on the counter.

“We’re going to a doctor,” Uther said. “Tomorrow.”

“I have plans.”

“Then change them.”

Morgana sighed. “Uther—”

“No,” Arthur said.

“Don’t be such a child. We’re going, Arthur. You don’t get a say in this—”

“ _You can’t make me_.” It was a snarl, hissing and venomous, and he relished the shock on their faces so much that the snarl spiralled into shouting. “You don’t get to make _fucking_ ultimatums when you’re never even here, so fucking _leave me alone_.”

He seized his mug and finally, _finally_ turned to leave.

Merlin’s voice stopped him. A single question that impaled him. As though an arrow had been shot at his chest, and the dossier swam before his eyes.

“You’ve – you’ve seen it?”

He couldn’t breathe.

“No, Arthur, I swear I haven’t—”

“Seen what?” Morgana asked sharply, but Arthur’s world was crumbling at the edges and the laugh that burst out of him was choked and wrong and—

“I thought – fuck, I can’t believe – you—”

“Seen _what_ , Arthur—?!”

“—you _knew_ and you said _nothing_.” He slammed the mug back onto the counter and only endured the burn when coffee arced over his hand because he was floating again, on the verge of spinning out into something manic and vicious ( _and not-him_ ). Morgana’s mouth was moving but words are nothing against the rage brimming over in his chest.

Arthur looked Merlin in the eye. “ _Fuck_ you.”

And then he ran. He was still floating, spiralling, and it was all automatic, the way his bones shuddered with every strike of foot on pavement and he was spinning spinning spinningspinning _spinning_ —

Arthur cried out when he smacked into the ground. Blood bloomed under his jumper and jeans. Grazes opened up on his cheek. His lip split. The pain took him in a haze, then; time fell away in his new universe, and all he could think was that the tarmac was so cold against his body that he couldn’t breathe.

“Arthur!”

 _They’re all here_ , he thought, dimly. Their footsteps thrummed through tarmac, then his bones, then his thoughts. Arthur spun out of himself to their song until a coat crashed onto his shoulders. It smelt of his father’s cologne and was so heavy he almost keeled forwards, and he blearily realised he was sitting upright.

“ _Fuck_.” He folded in on himself, the coat an oppressive, smothering weight. He had always been a silent crier, but something about the hands on his body broke him. He cried until he feared he would vomit. He cried out when he had no words. He drowned until he drifted back into himself and found his pulse pounding so hard it was dizzying.

“’m sorry.” His voice cracked. Blood trickled onto his chin but he said it again, and again, and again until their voices finally reached him. There was a hand on his forehead – his father’s, he could tell by the wedding ring – and another holding his hand – Merlin’s – and Morgana was crouched beside him, an arm curled around his waist, talking to him in a soothing voice he barely correlated with her. It was all wrong, he thought, as Uther swept him up into his arms like a bride, and then he was floating home. So wrong it had to be a dream, but when there were hands in his hair and he felt the warm weight of Merlin beside him under the heavy, heavy coat, he prayed it was real.

──────

It was a Saturday when they checked him into a facility. He’d have fought if his fever hadn’t dragged the world away from him; first, it was the hospital, half-formed and hazy in his delirium. The facility was next.

Arthur loathed every second. The observation. Afternoon crafts. Supervised toilet visits on the clock. He hated the other patients. He hated the white walls and the clinical smell and how spartan his room was and the meals. He was strong enough to resist, he _knew_ he was, and yet he had to eat every morsel on his plate before he could leave. He spat venom at the orderly who watched. He burned with silent fury with every swallow they won from him. He extended his time between bites from twenty seconds to thirty to a minute and he itched to tip his tray onto the floor even though he knew from experience what happened then.

The weeks dragged on. His meals grew. His hunger cues returned, and it was harder to resist when he was governed by those primal instincts but he – he wasn’t weak, he wasn’t he _wasn’t_. He said nothing in post-meal reflection, a torturous hour of discussion that he ignored, even when called upon. They couldn’t make him talk.

Visits were just as torturous. It took weeks before he could look his own family in the eye; he had decided he has nothing to say to them.

Merlin, though. Merlin was another matter.

His visits started and ended the same way. “I brought you another book,” Merlin always said, even though the previous one was on the table, and Arthur always sat hunched in his chair and stared out of the window while Merlin filled the abyss between them with his usual idiotic prattle.

Arthur never listened. He spun his mother’s ring around his finger with his thumb. He counted clouds, and how many calories they had made him eat. Under the table, he wrapped his thumb and index finger around his wrist until they met. Other times he did nothing at all – he didn’t even think.

Merlin always promised to come back next week, and Arthur told him not to, and he always sounded so dead that Merlin’s eyes flashed.

“I will.”

It was only when Arthur realised the facility reminds him of his father’s house with its careful impersonality that he stuck some photos to his wall. Freddie Mercury, views from a school ski trip, Morgana and his father one Christmas, Merlin playing Fagin in the school play.

There were photos of him, too, but Arthur glued them behind the cover of his journal instead. In the first, he’s stood in front of the Louvre, hands in his coat pockets, smiling. The other was at a café: Morgana pulling a funny face while Arthur lounged in his seat, a cup of coffee and a croissant in front of him, and looked up at the camera with a quirked eyebrow. She had asked him, once, how it all started, and Arthur’s guilt dredged up an answer. The truth was it wasn’t something he started; it was something he became.

The first time he offered more than short answers or shrugs in his therapy sessions was to tell this anecdote, and Dr. Gaius had produced his journal – complete with a folded piece of paper inside and a sticker on the front – as though it were a reward for good behaviour. Arthur had been savagely pleased when the sticker peeled off cleanly then and there, but Dr. Gaius was unperturbed.

“To be written in everyday.”

Arthur looked at the sheet of writing prompts, and then blankly at Dr. Gaius.

“But I have nothing to write.”

For the first few weeks he composed two-sentence acts of resistance that Dr. Gaius dutifully unpicked, but there was one prompt that haunted him. One day he curled up in the armchair in the corner of his room and turned to a new page. He wrote _What are your dreams and ambitions?_ and tried to dredge up his resentment – it was what sustained him, here in this white box – but a lump swelled in his throat and his chest tightened and once the question was laid bare in his own handwriting he hurled the journal across the room and curled up even smaller.

He retreated into his new self. His new self, because old-Arthur was dead and gone and new-Arthur enslaved him and demanded so much more: denial, unshaking hostility, loyalty without question. Absolute devotion to the cause. To grapple with his contradictions was to ensnare himself in his own web of lies and thoughts and emotions and truths he didn't dare ( _couldn't_ ) comprehend. He faced a chimera that was at once part of him and apart from him, that would kill him unless he killed it. And he knew, somewhere deep in the darkness, that he had to kill it first.

He only realised he was crying when a nurse fetched him for crafts and she pressed tissues into his hands. Once there, he folded more cranes, and then practiced birds, and then started a small army of dragons (he gave them to Merlin on Friday, arranged artfully in a frontier on the table, and Merlin’s smile was so bright Arthur’s heart ached).

Later, he retrieved his journal and studied old-Arthur. Then he found his pen and forged onwards.

_  
What are your dreams and ambitions? / Things I want to do _

  * _Go to uni – not Business. Offer for Biology._
  * _Do some good in world_
  * _Out and proud. Already out(ed). Working on the proud_
  * _Visit New Zealand_
  * _Visit mother’s birthplace_
  * _Rebuild relationship with food_
  * _(Re)build (?) relationship with father_
  * _Find peace with self_
  * _Make new friends_
  * _Find someone to love / be loved – bit complicated_
  * _Take Merlin skiing_
  * _Find old Arthur, somehow._



──────

Eventually, it was Sunday.

It was a clear night for fireworks. Arthur had strict instructions to _stay put_ because Merlin’s sense of direction was appalling, even in a park that only contained a bonfire, a makeshift bar, and a cluster of vendors selling hot food. Lanterns hung in a web above the throngs of people, and there was something transient in the way that faces passed in and out of their glow.

A hand landed on his shoulder.

“There you are.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I haven’t moved an inch, and you went all of six feet away.”

“It’s been twenty minutes and it’s _dark_ , you clotpole.” Merlin passed Arthur a hotdog with lashings of mustard and ketchup and said nothing when Arthur wiped most of the sauce away with his napkin. Instead, he began a monologue about the Gunpowder Plot that only ceased when Arthur was wiping the grease off his fingers.

Merlin took a gratifying bite of his burger and Arthur said quietly, “I hope it’s not cold.”

Merlin waved a dismissive hand, and Arthur peered up at the dark sky above them while he waited. The chill in the air pressed against his face and he shivered. Ever since that night, crumpled on the pavement, bitter cold just reminded him of the time when he was always numb. Not that he was anywhere near the finish line – it was just that by now he’d braved one battle too many. The relapse during his first term at university, the first Christmas during treatment, those days where he had played tennis with Morgana and was too restless, moving, moving, _burning burning_ to play game after game after game until she snapped that he was crazy and then he’d gone for a run so long that his lungs were afire and his legs molten when she found him under his duvet later, shaking and too tired to think.

Hardest of all, Arthur thought, when a stiff breeze rustled the trees and tangled into his scarf, was that hazy period in the midst of treatment when he was no longer malnourished enough to logic himself into his delusions. Denial, unshaking hostility, loyalty without question, absolute devotion to the cause… but as they withered, so did the cold, because as he got better he had Merlin’s warmth. Warm smiles, warm hands, warm embraces, and now, after Merlin had whacked him in the arm to get his attention, warm lips against his cheek.

Later, when they were a little drunk on cider and each other’s heartbeats, Merlin will explore Arthur’s body with lips that hum softly against his skin and easy touches that turn firm when he wants Arthur’s breath to judder out of him. Merlin will nuzzle his throat. He’ll trail kisses as far as he dares, knowing that Arthur’s body was a battlefield but revering it until Arthur forgot to fight against his own skin and bone and instead give in to Merlin’s supplication.

Arthur was not at peace with himself, not yet. If he could value his body even a fraction as much as Merlin did, he would; but, against his better judgement, he had faith.

One day, his mind will fall silent.

One day he will win his war.


End file.
